When you look around the internet you are going to notice that even though the web is full of useful advice what to do when you are leaving a rented accommodation – on how to get your deposit back to how to easily tackle end of tenancy cleaning and other related questions, there is little to no advice aimed at the landlords themselves.
So if you are the owner of the rented place and you have some kind of a problem, you are more or less left on your own to tackle it in the best way you can conceive.
This post will try to right this wrong at least to a certain extent by providing you with tips about what to do in case your renters have vacated your property but forgot to take all their useless junk.
The first thing that you should do of course is make sure that those items are truly abandoned. It is easy to jump to conclusions when you enter the place and see piles of rubbish everywhere. Give them a call and ask. But 8 out 10 cases show that if the renter has already returned the keys, you will have quite a bit of trouble to go through while performing an emergency junk clearance while preparing the property for the next people to move in. There is always a chance that the renter would return at some point and look for the trash that he or she had left behind. In order to cover yourself legally, you should send a letter to the address which was rented out in the tenant’s name. Include a warning that in case the person in question does not come to collect their property in 24 hours, everything is going to be disposed of. While you wait for those 24 hours to pass, change all the locks in the house/apartment. Even if the original keys have been returned, you never know how many copies have been made.
Now that you have written evidence you have done everything in your power not to subject the property that has been left behind to a rubbish removal project, you can proceed with bringing everything to the trashcan. Photograph everything that you are going to dispose of, so in case of a dispute of any sort you have evidence about what you have thrown away and what was actually never at the property in the first place. This will also help you go through all the items and decide whether there are at least some items that are worth donating or even selling for a small sum that is going to cover the charge of the rubbish removal company that is going to take everything to the recycling depot. Actually, finding a reliable contractor to help you with the job is the best way to make sure this problem is off your list of duties and you have nothing to worry about, no matter how much junk needs to be taken care of.
